Recent advances in mixed-reality (MR) technologies, such as mobile augmented reality (AR), virtualreality (VR) headsets supporting “video passthrough,” or embedding of ambient displays in physical environments, have enabled designs of novel experiences, including immersing users in fictional narratives blended in real-world settings. Meanwhile, research informs that users need clear connections between fictional events and their real-life scenarios. Visualization of mixed-reality narratives before technical implementation enables designers to quickly put themselves in virtual-physical hybrid settings and see events from users’ perspectives. Through the processes, designers may develop tendencies of imagining being in hypothetical scenarios and taking different perspectives, which are necessary for emphasizing with users. This paper presents a web-based system that allows designers to visualize mixed-reality narratives in two-dimensional scroll-driven animations, which present dynamic compositing of two parallel, synchronized panels of images, for instance, the left panel showing realworld events and the right panel showing fictional events, forming the middle mixed-reality panel. A field trial of the system was conducted in a design workshop involving a group of students. Before and after using the system, each student participant’s tendencies of fantasizing and perspective taking were measured and compared. This paper reports the results and interprets the findings.

Mixed Reality; Metaverse, Narrative; Games; Scroll-driven Animation; Empathy